[ccfic caption-text format="plaintext"]
By Michael Flanagan
Hometown Weekly Sports Editor
History was made at the Cochecho Country Club in Dover, New Hampshire on Wednesday, August 17 in the 2016 New England Junior Amateur Invitational.
Among the seven local high school golf stars to receive an invitation to play for Team Massachusetts were Xaverian’s Jack Boulger (Walpole) and Andrew McInerney (Natick).
The two Xaverian men helped Team Massachusetts to a total score of 1,047 throughout the three-day event. Boulger and McInerney’s efforts allowed the Bay State to gain a comfortable edge over the rest of the field after the first two rounds of the tournament, as Massachusetts entered the third round with a total score of 690 (-10) and had a 25-stroke lead over second-place Connecticut.
Team Massachusetts finished strong on the third leg of the event, ending with a 35-stroke victory in the three-round shotgun, the largest margin of victory in the event since 2014 when Team Connecticut won by 29 strokes.
The win on Wednesday is the third Junior Amateur title in four years for Team Massachusetts, and the state’s 14th overall.
Boulger, who plays out of Walpole Country Club, shot a total score of 207 through 54 holes (-3), the lowest combined individual score of all seven of the Massachusetts players who competed in the field.
Boulger’s score of 207 ended up finishing as the second best individual score in the entire tournament behind only Maine’s Cole Anderson, who shot a 200 (-10).
Good putting and the ability to improve round-by-round were the two major keys to success in the tournament, according to Boulger.
“I was hitting the ball pretty good,” said Boulger following the victory. “The first two days, I was making a lot of putts. I wasn’t hitting it great the first round, but in the second round, I started to hit it a little better. Today, I was pretty solid off the tee.”
